New colors, video camera, price cuts. Whatever. The Apple show belonged to Steve Jobs.

So how did he look? Rail thin, as you can see from this picture (see below or click here for a bunch more shots of the 54-year old chief executive). That shouldn’t come as a surprise, given he’s recovering from a liver transplant.

Even looking frail, however, his presence pumped up the crowd. “Steve Jobs making an appearance was definitely a pleasant surprise,” said Shaw Wu, an analyst with Kaufman Brothers. Another analyst, Brian Marshall of Broadpoint AmTech added, “I was surprised to see Steve. It’s great to see that he’s doing well.”

Here is a chronology of Jobs’ health issues:

2004:

August: Jobs announces he underwent successful surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his pancreas. He says it was a rare form of pancreatic cancer called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor.

2005:

June: Jobs mentions the cancer in a commencement address at Stanford University. “This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades,” he says.
Read the whole speech and see the video here.

2008:

June 9: Jobs appears dramatically thinner at an Apple iPhone event, touching off speculation that the cancer has returned. The company said later he was fighting a “common bug” and taking antibiotics. Apple called Jobs’ health a “private matter”.

July 26: The New York Times journalist Joe Nocera wrote in a column that he had spoken to Jobs about his health but that because the conversation was off record, he could not disclose what was said. “While his health problems amounted to a good deal more than ‘a common bug,’ they weren’t life-threatening and he doesn’t have a recurrence of cancer,” Nocera wrote.

Sept. 9: At an iPod product launch, Jobs jokes about his health by walking on stage in front of a giant screen that flashed “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” — a quotation borrowed from Mark Twain.

Oct. 3: A false Internet report that Jobs had suffered a heart attack briefly pushes Apple shares down 2 percent to a 17-month low. Apple quickly denied the report on iReport.com, a citizen journalist site owned by CNN.

Oct. 14: At a Mac product launch event, Jobs jokes again about his health. His blood pressure was 110 over 70 and he said, “And that’s all we’re going to be talking about Steve’s health today.”

Dec. 16: Apple said Jobs won’t deliver the keynote address at the Macworld trade show in January, reviving concerns about his health. Asked to explain the decision, spokesman Steve Dowling said it would be the last time Apple takes part in Macworld so “it doesn’t make sense for us to make a major investment in a trade show we’ll no longer be attending.”

Dec. 30: Apple shares fall as much as 2 percent after Gizmodo reported that Jobs health was “rapidly declining” and that was the reason why he canceled the Macworld keynote.

2009:

Jan. 5: Jobs says he has been losing weight throughout 2008 and his doctors think a hormone imbalance was “robbing” him of proteins. He says he has begun a “relatively simple and straightforward” treatment for his nutritional problem and that he will continue as CEO during recovery. “I will be the first one to step up and tell our board of directors if I can no longer continue to fulfill my duties as Apple’s CEO,” he says. Apple shares rise 5 percent.

Jan. 14: Jobs announces medical leave until the end of June, saying his health issues are “more complex” than originally thought. He hands day-to-day operations to Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook and says he plans to remain involved in major strategic decisions. Apple shares fall 10 percent in after-hours trading. Read his email to employees here.

Jan. 21: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is examining Apple’s disclosures about Jobs to ensure investors were not mislead, Bloomberg reports.

June 8: Apple unveils new iPhone 3GS at its annual Worldwide Developer’s Conference but Jobs does not make an appearance.

June 20: The Wall Street Journal reports that Jobs had a liver transplant in Memphis, Tennessee about two months ago and he is expected to return to work later in June. Apple declines comment except to say it expects Jobs back at the end of the month.

June 22: Jobs is spotted at the Apple campus in Cupertino, California, underscoring expectations that he is either back at work or will return soon.

June 23: The Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute confirms it performed a liver transplant on Jobs and says he is “recovering well and has an excellent prognosis.” The hospital does not give more details, saying the confirmation had come with Jobs’ permission.

June 29: Jobs returns from medical leave. An Apple spokesman says Jobs will be in the office a few days a week, and work from home the rest of the time.

The New York Times headline on Apple’s Macworld convention is so snappy that it almost frees me of the obligation to write this blog entry today:

Want to copy iTunes Music? Go Ahead, Apple says.

Fortunately, the Times couldn’t fit this other part into the headline, giving us something to quote:

Beginning this week, three of the four major music labels - Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group - will begin selling music through iTunes without digital rights management software, or D.R.M., which controls the copying and use of digital files. The fourth, EMI, was already doing so.

In return, Apple, whose dominance in online music sales gives it powerful leverage, agreed to a longstanding demand of the music labels and said it would move away from its insistence on pricing all individual song downloads on iTunes at 99 cents.

Instead, the majority of songs will drop to 69 cents beginning in April, while the biggest hits and newest songs will go for $1.29. Others that are moderately popular will remain at 99 cents.

The music industry thinks these moves will help sales, while people who like to share their music or play it on devices that are not iPods might stop re-mixing geek rallies with street protests.

The move was as much about competition as beneficence, as The Wall Street Journal noted:

New online-music rivals have also emerged, including Amazon.com Inc., which sells many songs at a cheaper price than iTunes and without copy protection, giving users more freedom with the songs they have purchased.

Also from the WSJ:

Starting Tuesday, Apple said iPhone 3G owners will also be able to download songs from the iTunes Store via their cellular networks instead of having to connect to a wireless Internet network. The company said the price, selection and quality of the songs would be the same as they are online.

Reuters and Bloomberg focused on the Macworld show itself, and how from a fireworks perspective, it was plain boring.

Bloomberg:

The company said last month that it won’t attend Macworld conferences anymore after this week. Apple shares often fall after its events because investors frequently want bigger announcements, said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co. in Minneapolis. Even so, today’s presentation was “underwhelming,” he said.

“Apple made a statement that Macworld is not important and they showed it with the products they announced,” Munster said. Updated software, a new notebook and iTunes price changes are “nice, but not needle moving.”

And Reuters:

With consumers flocking to low-cost PCs like netbooks, which Apple has dismissed, many analysts hope to see some new product catalyst in the near term to bolster the company’s sales in a recession.

Of course, Reuters noted, that’s not what they got this week.

Keep an eye on

New York TImes, Part 1: Your correspondent and a bunch of others wrote about the paper’s decision to start running display advertising on the front page, with CBS getting the first slot this past Monday. So far, that’s the only one we’ve seen. Tuesday and Wednesday featured ad-free fronts. C’mon advertisers — save your favorite paper! (To be fair, The Wall Street Journal and other papers don’t ALWAYS sell their front-page ads every day)

New York Times, Part 2: Writing in the Atlantic, Michael Hirschorn posits the notion that the Times could go under — in a few months’ time. Having scared the kids, he points out how slim the odds are. It’s tempting to embrace nightmare scenarios, but let’s keep in mind that the Times could do a lot of things to preserve its core: the newspaper. (The Atlantic)

New York Times, Part 3: Many media writers can barely resist the urge to beat up on Times Co Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr, the latest of the Ochs-Sulzberger clan to chair the company and publish the paper. There’s plenty of reasons to do so, as New York Observer’s media writer extraordinaire John Koblin points out. Still, he said that Sulzberger is sticking to the task at hand: journalism. That might help the Times ride out the storm when other newspapers founder. That, Koblin said, is why the NYO has named Sulzberger one of its “Media Mensches” of 2009. (New York Observer)

(Photo: Share your Randy Newman tunes, courtesy of Apple. Here’s Randy performing at Macworld. Reuters)

Apple investors and Apple fans heaved a collective sigh of relief on Monday morning after CEO and founder Steve Jobs finally made an attempt to end rumors that he’s on his deathbed.

Jobs sent a letter to his followers, who will be gathering at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco in his absence, explaining his recent weight-loss has been due to a hormonal imbalance.

As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority. Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause — a hormone imbalance that has been “robbing” me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

Jobs goes on to say the remedy is ”relatively simple and straightforward”  and that he’s already begun treatment.

Meanwhile, Apple fans at Macworld Expo will miss a Jobs appearance and the analysts over at Bernstein Research expect the show to be “relatively unexciting”. They expect the major highlights to include a demonstration of Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard”; new Mac desktops and a modest update to the AppleTV.

But Bernstein says don’t hold your breath for a new cheaper iPhone as has been speculated.

A new iPhone is unlikely, in our view, though we do expect Apple to introduce a lower-end iPhone model within the first half of the year.

Keep an eye on:

• Blu-ray DVD technology has a fuzzy future - (NY Times)
• Universal Pictures has sold its Rogue Pictures unit to Relativity Media - (WSJ)
• New York Times will sell display advertising on its front page - (Reuters)

No matter how hard the PR execs try, Apple can’t help but court controversy when it comes to the health of its leader Steve Jobs.

Ever since it was revealed he had a successful operation for pancreatic cancer, Apple fans and investors have been very skittish about any hint that Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, founder and visionary, might have to step down due to bad health. Jobs’ recent public appearances haven’t helped as he has looked unusually thin.

So news that Jobs would not be making his now annual keynote appearance at next month’s Macworld show sent shares down nearly 7 percent on Wednesday.

Apple said it won’t be making appearances at future Macworld’s so the real short term loser in this might be Macworld organizer IDG, which has said it will soldier on. 

No one’s quite sure what Apple’s up to here. It could be cost saving, it could be they have no special new products to show off, or it really could be Jobs is feeling under the weather.

Of course, if they want to show off new fancy gadgets at the start of the year like other mere mortal consumer electronics companies they could always show up at CES — the not inconsequential gadget extravaganza in Las Vegas.

Apple for CES 2010 anyone?

(Photo: Reuters)

Keep an eye on:

• Music labels are thinking of new ways to understand their fans - (Reuters)

• News Corp makes move to Nasdaq from NYSE - (New York Times, Reuters)

• Yahoo sets 90-day limit for users’ data retention - (Wall Street Journal)